About

Most sustainability practitioners were drawn in to the field through a myriad of experiences that range the gamut of the various sectors that now define the discipline – namely Environmental, Social and Governance. A realization that Climate Change is largely anthropogenic and that this generation has the biggest chance of slowing the destructive path that we find ourselves in.  My first encounter was through conservation, when I was invited to an event (see here) to witness the burning of illegally acquired (Poached) Elephant tusks. I was in the fourth grade at the time, and I could not make any sense of the spectacle. I would later learn the significance and enormity of the event as I got to know about the impact of the global trade in Ivory. Elephants are hunted down and killed for their tusks, which are made up of Ivory that is then sold in markets around the world, mainly China and S.E. Asia. Between 1970 and 1980, these sales went on unfettered and brought Elephant populations to the brink, causing countries to revisit accepted practices. It was not until 1989 when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) banned the international Ivory trade and set the stage for a protracted battle against poaching. The CITES ban was a prelude to the Ivory burning event I attended. The idea was to prevent this Ivory from ever making its way into the market through illegal trading and removing the incentive that attracted many Poachers, who at this time risked severe legal repercussions. The second push for me came while I was a freshman at the university, when I together with other students joined the Green Belt Movement’s late leader, and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Prof. Wangari Maathai at Karura forest in Nairobi, Kenya to protest the illegal sale of protected forest land by the government.  These two events cemented my move into Sustainable thinking and advised my training and career trajectory in the civil service, academia and business.